


The Crest Of The Waves

by Kalyppso



Category: Fire Emblem Series, Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Adventure, Adventure & Romance, Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Alternate Universe - Mermaid, F/M, M/M, Mermaid Hilda, Mermaid Lorenz, Mermaid My Unit | Byleth, Multi, My Unit is not Byleth, Nonbinary My Unit | Byleth, Other, Polyamory, Romance
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-04-05
Updated: 2020-09-17
Packaged: 2021-03-01 16:53:55
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 13,214
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23500387
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kalyppso/pseuds/Kalyppso
Summary: A Mermaid AU for Claude x Lorenz x Hilda x Fae (a nonbinary My Unit). Claude and Dimitri are found out aboard Edelgard's ship, resulting in Claude being banished to the ocean where he's saved by some (self-important) mermaids, setting in action a series of events that will affect all those who travel the seas, and those who live under them.--The third night that Claude was in tow, he woke to the sound of a hiss behind him. He was rising instantly, with a fear of breaching whales toppling him into the sea, but the noise hadn’t been strong enough to signal that... Instead he caught sight of a large mass of matted green, a pale profile of a human face, and a flash of an inhuman eye catching the faint light of the stars, before that creature descended into the black waters of the night.
Relationships: Dimitri Alexandre Blaiddyd & Claude von Riegan, Hilda Valentine Goneril/Claude von Riegan, Hilda Valentine Goneril/My Unit | Byleth, Lorenz Hellman Gloucester/Claude von Riegan, Lorenz Hellman Gloucester/Hilda Valentine Goneril, Lorenz Hellman Gloucester/Hilda Valentine Goneril/Claude von Riegan, Lorenz Hellman Gloucester/Hilda Valentine Goneril/My Unit | Byleth/Claude von Riegan, Lorenz Hellman Gloucester/My Unit | Byleth, My Unit | Byleth/Claude von Riegan
Comments: 9
Kudos: 13





	1. Lost at Sea

**Author's Note:**

> All Fire Emblem properties and characters have credit to Nintendo and their respective creators / owners. I'm just playing.
> 
> Everyone is their post timeskip ages (at least).
> 
> There aren't _graphic_ depictions of violence, but there are mild depictions of violence. You might not love my depiction of Edelgard, be warned.

It had taken three imperials to bind Claude in ropes sufficient enough to stop his struggling – an embarrassment, considering it had taken six to hold down Dimitri, who even now they could not wrestle under their control in a way that would allow them to shackle or bind him. He continued to lash out and writhe, even as the blood continued to drip down his face, as it did down Edelgard’s dagger.

“Oh, Brother,” Edelgard taunted, “you screamed so loud while you were fighting. So quiet now. Though I suppose what remains of your loathsome gaze says far more than your ignorant tongue might ever articulate.”

“…Kill you,” Dimitri whispered, before grunting softly in pain, the elbow holding his temple to the deck of the Aymr pressing downward. He said again, “I’m going to kill you.”

“Then let this show the difference between us,” the Flame Emperor said with a smirk, “because I will spare you, brother, for our great fraternal bond.”

Her melodic tone gave way to a laugh that reached almost a cackle, and Claude could not fathom finding himself among her followers. Could they not see the obvious cruelty in her words and actions? Did they think it cunning of her to lie so openly about the purely political motivations that would have her spare Dimitri’s life?

“Your friend however–”

“Leave him,” Dimitri growled.

“I think not,” she insisted, a man at her side sliding a clean white cloth over the upheld dagger. “Stand him up.”

“Your Highness–” Claude began, but then two more loops of rope found him, one around his mouth and the other around his neck.

“You’re not in a position to negotiate,” she assured him, and huffed out a breath of air as he bit into the terrible texture between his teeth. He felt ... relieved somehow, uncertain if he’d even wanted the opportunity to try and talk himself out of this, to convince the imperials he was an asset to be used.

“We’re going to leave you at sea,” she explained, and Claude’s attention was jolted aside, the rope about his neck being tied to a stake. “There you may choose your own death,” and the stake was being hammered into a thick plank of wood so porous that Claude had to wonder how it didn’t crumble under the weight of the hammer – and whether it would even float, “drowning,” down came the hammer, “dehydration,” and again, “suicide.” The final nail, in the most efficient coffin Claude had ever bore witness to.

Dimitri was fighting with his captors again, biting some man’s hand as he screamed, but Claude held no illusions of escape, and Edelgard seemed unworried, watching his display with the sort of fond annoyance one might reserve for an unruly child.

“Dimitri!” Edelgard beckoned, to no response, the scuffle continued.

“Get him under control, you imbeciles!” called Edelgard’s man. “Or your journey home will be even more uncomfortable than that of the barbaric prince.”

Edelgard turned back to Claude, her hair flipping over her shoulder as she condescended, “Not even a goodbye. So little love lost over you.”

He flexed his wrists in his bindings and searched her eyes for pity, regret, disgust … if they were there, they were hard to find.

“Check him once more for weapons,” she ordered, and Claude found his boots taken away, despite nothing beyond his clothing being found upon his person.

“May you find peace,” she said, thoughtfully. “Or oblivion.”

The plank was thrown overboard, and Claude jumped after it, in hopes of preventing being choked by it.

“No!”

He could hear Dimitri as he plummeted, and wondered whether he would cooperate long enough for Edelgard to stay true to her word in sparing him.

The ocean wasn’t ice cold, he’d experienced that horror in Faerghus two summers back, but to say it was bracing would feel like an understatement. Heavier than the plank, or less buoyant at least, Claude still sunk into the quiet of the dark blue depths until the rope around his neck went tight. Even prepared as he was, he gasped in a mouthful of nauseating brine.

Forcing his mouth closed, he blinked once, heavy, watching scattering shapes in the din. Claude assumed he had frightened dolphins chasing the edge of the ship and wondered if he had ruined his chance at some fantastical tale where they recognized his plight and carried him along, as they were ever compassionate in such stories. He kicked himself up towards the light, seeking the relief of the surface, but instead found he could only cough and retch, his throat and stomach burning from the saltwater, and his neck and lungs strained and sore from the rope.

He propelled himself towards the plank, putting slack in the rope and then bouncing the back of his head against it, attempting to pull on the right cord to loosen the mediocre noose around his windpipe. Between the force of the water from his recent dive, the lack of oxygen, the discoordination of trying to locate something on the back of his head without use of his hands, and a desperation for results, Claude smashed his skull against the plank a good six times before achieving the desired result.

The line tethering him to his raft shortened as the bindings on his throat and mouth grew loose and heavy in the water, weighing down around his neck.

He couldn’t make out the words, could barely make out the sight of him, when Claude turned his attention skywards at the sound of a shout. A line of people were staring at him from the edge of the ship, but Dimitri’s mess of blond was unmistakable, and he bobbed in the water, unable to bring himself to signal his companion in any way. Dimitri was pulled back on deck, less violent now than he had been, Claude noted, depressed and mollified all at once.

 _‘Be smarter,’_ Claude begged. _‘We can’t both die here...’_

He floated for a few minutes, helpless, hopeless, mirthless, watching as the Aymr took up her sails and ventured out of reach.

Claude started to play with his buoyancy, trying to slip free of the ropes around his head, floating on his side as he bent his legs to allow access of his bound hands, bringing them around to his front. Bouncing in the water, he brought his hands down again and again against the edge of the plank, or the stake, but this was more difficult, as he’d have to spin the plank around from where the stake wanted to be ocean-side rather than skyward, as he tried to fray the soaked bindings in a way that might unravel them.

An hour or more into his dilemma, Claude had to take a break. He was exhausted, in so many ways. He didn’t even know why he was bothering except to have something to do.

He pulled himself up onto the wooden board, wincing as the pock marked surface scratched at the insides of his thighs. The edges of his flotation device chipped and frayed, sending little splinters out into the ocean, and he sighed in exasperation, rolling onto his back, letting the jut of the stake press into the top of his head so that he could feel at least a little assured of the amount of rope that sat free and loose around his neck.

The burn of the sun on his skin, and the itch of sweat and dried salt on his body not submerged in ocean water eventually disturbed him enough to try again, and again, and again, to free himself from the ropes, with no success. Claude would have liked to think that he’d made progress, or that the confusion of his ordeal, the concussion, the sun stroke, the wet bloated hands, the hunger, were elements that might pass, so that he could try later, stronger and of more sound mind, but he knew that he was only fooling himself. Humiliated and broken, he knew there were no better times ahead, and that with each passing minute, he was as strong as he’d ever be again.

Night came, a horror to behold. The black of the sky and the ocean playing tricks with the mind, and the only thing Claude could focus upon was the twinkling ghost lights on the Aymr in the distance. Despite being just as silent as the stars overhead, they felt nothing like them.

The sky was familiar and reassuring. She would welcome him where the sea had not, and would keep him company through this.

“Are you ready to go yet?” Lorenz asked thoughtfully, swimming up behind Fae where they hovered down and at an angle some thirty feet below the plank on the surface.

“They’re dying,” Fae answered.

“They’re probably a criminal,” Lorenz said to try to dissuade his companion’s empathy, and felt instantly guilty about the implications of his sentence, and went on. “You know how the humans are. With cruelty even in their passions, it only makes sense that their justice and punishments would extol similar pain. And this human would be no different in their nature. Their fate is sad, but you need not cry over one human.”

“But we aren’t human,” Hilda argued, flitting around the pair of them.

“And they’ve spent the day bound and cooking,” Fae lamented, turning about to face Lorenz, so that he was opposed by them and Hilda both.

“We’re kinder,” Hilda insisted.

“They aren’t a threat,” Fae said; it wasn’t even something they had to impress or insist upon. It was simply a fact.

“They’ll likely die out here anyway,” Lorenz retorted sadly, and though he’d meant it as a means of dissuading their interest in assisting the human, he heard it in his voice just as they did, their eyes alighting in relief – it had sounded like a resolution, a casual ‘why not?’

He turned away from both of them, holding his forehead in defeat, facing the same direction as the others until they swam out at a distance, where they broached the surface to analyze their lost cause.

When Claude woke, he felt sick, waterlogged and sore.

He raised his left hand to his neck, and his right stayed on his stomach, the ropes falling loose around his wrists. His eyes snapped open in surprise as he looked down at his hands in front of him, untangling the ropes until he could see that they truly were cut loose around him. Reaching up again, he pulled at the noose and found it to be more of a garland, as this rope too, was cut and left upon his body.

He moved slowly, wondering if he was hallucinating, despite not even yet having been on his own for a full twenty-four hours. The ropes must’ve unraveled or soaked or caught on something, a simple explanation for what his eyes couldn’t see.

Claude quickly braided the remnants, and tangled them around the stake.

With a mournful tug at his shirt, he looked up and down the horizon. It was unlikely that he would be found by anyone, and he was too unfamiliar with where the Aymr had left him to know how likely it might be that he could wash up somewhere, but he couldn’t just sit idle, in wait of the end. He could try, at least, to make something of a net, though the depth of the waters made it feel unlikely that he would be able to reach anything that might pass for food while maintaining the integrity of his loops of rope.

Hopeless, Claude started the process of uncoiling the strands so that he could roll the cut edges between his hands and try to twine them back together, a thinner line of middling strength. What he wouldn’t give to have even a basic understanding of weaving; although starting down the train of thought of wishing for things, Claude found that he would give almost anything to be back aboard the Failnaught, or even the Areadbhar, with Dimitri relieved of his rage, the empire forced back into order. When he thought of reality, and where he and Dimitri were now, and the firepower of the Aymr once again finding the unprotected villages on the coast – places he’d wanted to protect, Claude found himself in tears. He took a break from uncoiling the line.

Bending one leg up onto his sole protection from treading water, Claude leaned on his knee, watching the rise of the sun with bitter remorse.

Before noon, he was dealing with starvation and the sweltering heat of the sun. He tried tying his shirt overhead to protect his brain from boiling as he completed his task, but then two large waves set him off balance, and his momentum was lost anyway.

Claude had to cling to his pet project to keep from losing it to the current, and bobbed under his plank a few times, realizing the wood had actually been his best chance at a shadow to escape the sunlight and change his body temperature. Surfacing, he had to convince himself that it wasn’t worth it to suffer a mouthful of saltwater, dehydrated as he was.

If he could finish what he was doing, he might be able to catch something. Just one fish, or even a mouthful of ocean bugs, would be … unpleasant, but would also be food, and offer some measure of hydration too.

A few hours later his rope was as good as it was going to get, and Claude was lost to hoping it could be much improved. He pulled himself from his pants and threaded the line through the back belt loop. With clumsy, tired hands, he knotted each pant leg as close to the ankle as firmly as he could before getting into the water with his creation, ensuring the material was saturated and would drag along at the full length of the rope without simply snapping away.

He was cold, and his ears burned by the time he was gasping for air at the surface.

In the evening, he checked his line, and was uncertain whether the dark shape he saw flitting away from his trap was imagined, or whether he’d successfully scared away his only chance of survival. He couldn’t tell if he was still sweating anymore, constantly saturated by the ocean, but he felt as if his tongue were made of sandpaper, his body devoid of water.

The moon was waning, lighting waves in a way that was worrying on top of everything else. Claude would see their shimmer against the black of the sky and brace himself to be pulled under, only for the water to roll on, harmless. The illusions raised by the darkness were more nerve wracking than any Faerghusian ghost stories.

He thought he would not sleep, but woke when the sun had already risen, arms wrapped around his flimsy raft, his lips dry and bleeding. It took a few more minutes before he could will himself to move, rubbing at where the fragile plank had scraped his bare skin. He missed his pants as he straightened up, legs dangling in the water, his underclothes offering scant protection from the itch of the wood.

While scanning his surroundings, Claude froze. His self-same pants were on the plank behind him, bulging – writhing – as if there were something living inside.

“What the fuck,” Claude whispered, swinging his legs together and into the water, having learned that leaning forward on the plank as he would need to to investigate would just tip the whole thing over. He held onto the plank and waded around to the edge of it, trying to discern what he was looking at, but what he found only confused him further.

He’d wondered whether he’d find that some fish who was stupid enough to get trapped had also jumped atop the plank and wriggled in an attempt to free itself, but instead he found that his pants were pinned to the plank. Stabbed closed and held in place by a long curved dagger. The blade was opaque, yellow bone, clearly well-kept, and sharp. It took one hand braced against the plank and while his other wiggled it back and forth to free it from its place, and Claude once again looked out and around at each empty horizon.

Running a nervous hand around his neck, he had to wonder if it wasn’t the same blade that had cut him free, and whether it was cursed. Would his third night on the water manifest the owner of the blade?

He shook his head. The possibility seemed no less absurd than his predicament, but if it did … would they not be benevolent? They’d cut him free … and now they’d left him a gift – if he wasn’t dreaming.

He brought the point of the blade to his index finger, and then flinched back from the pain.

“Less likely to be a dream…” Claude mumbled aloud, turning the dagger to and fro.

The hilt was ornate, and foreign in a way that he couldn’t explain. The grip was bright and colorful, turquoise and pale yellow fabric, that he would hesitate to call leather, with embossed designs of starfish and seashells, while the pommel was a rough white stone, which brought barnacles to mind.

He stabbed the blade back into the side of his plank and wrapped his hands on either end of the waist of his pants.

“It’s fine. This is normal. I was fishing and … something was caught,” he babbled. He sighed. “I’m sure this won’t kill me.”

Opening the bundle of fabric revealed two things. The first was another woven bag, and it wriggled and fussed uncomfortably; Claude left it alone for now. The second was stationary, and he reached in to grab it, and found the outside rough and unyielding. In the light, he choked upon seeing it for what it was: a jug or jar, made of a rose colored clay he didn’t recognize, stoppered with some manner of pale yellow sponge.

Claude licked his dry lips with his dry tongue and looked around again, and held the jug to his chest with his right elbow as he worked at stabbing his pants back in place and moving to where he could sit up on his raft. With trembling fingers, he pulled the plug free, and watched the liquid slosh inside.

He gasped, and smelled it experimentally, and when that yielded nothing he drank, and he drank, and he drank. Three long swallows of clean fresh water.

He felt like crying, or praying, but he didn’t want to waste the water he’d drank by allowing himself more tears … and didn’t know who he should thank for the impossibility in his hands. The fresh water had clearly not been a gift from the ocean...

He choked a little as he stoppered the bottle and then pulled his pants closer to him to carefully place it back inside, and started working on the bag, inside which he found five healthy herring.

Claude closed up most of his gift, letting the fish rest in the water, save one. This fish he could thank, pressing a firm, but apologetic hand down onto the creature as he prepared to eat it. He’d never had raw herring before, and wasn’t even sure it could be eaten safely, but after doing it once, and no signs of life materialized on the horizon, Claude found himself tempted to do it again. He held himself back only because he had to imagine that if this were a blessing and not a curse, then no additional miracles were forthcoming.

“You **_armed_ ** them?!”

“Lorenz,” Hilda warned, half scolding even in her comfort.

“Humans have terrible teeth,” Fae laughed, swimming around him. “I didn’t know that they could eat without a blade.”

Loren ran his thumb over the place on his side where his bag would usually sit, sighing.

“They only ate one fish though,” Fae worried, looking up at the shadow on the surface, a dark splotch against the color of the setting sun.

“Maybe that’s all they needed?” Lorenz suggested.

Hilda shook her head softly, causing her long pink hair to cascade in little curls around her. “You felt their heartbeat on the current earlier. They’re afraid.”

“As I would be, on land,” Lorenz admitted. He wrapped a hand around Fae’s shoulder.

“We’re about a week from the closest human settlement?” Fae said this as a question, and Lorenz almost immediately pulled his hand away.

“No.”

“You’re right,” Hilda answered anyway, curiosity in her tone.

“We could pull them there,” Fae suggested. “While they sleep,” they added for Lorenz’s benefit, but he hardly seemed placated. “Unless you have a better idea?”

Lorenz was rubbing his forehead, face-palming. “We just need to be careful.”

“As always,” Fae promised.

Claude had trouble sleeping that night. It was the first night of a new moon, and the ocean was particularly black. He was plagued by the itch of the plank, anticipation for what the morning might bring, fear of the tide, and discomfort of foreign fish, it took a long time before he drifted off, and even then, it felt as if the ocean rushed around him. He opened his eyes to the stars racing past him in one moment, and then heard soft plunges of water around him the next. He eased his feet up onto the plank after that, for fear that his new food supply might be attracting predators.

Yet he woke the next day, alive and intact, with no more obvious oddities in his little oasis on the ocean. He waited until after midday to eat a second fish, wondering if he should even push past this to only eat once every other day, but there was a comfort in downing his meal with a few sips of water. Something strange had happened, and he could hold proof of it in his hands – not that the fish or the dagger weren’t proof enough, but maybe it was just that the water made his brain feel less fuzzy, as his usual thoughts and curiosity sought more plausible explanations for what he was going through.

The following night, Claude didn’t know it, but he slept through four hours of being tugged along the surface of the ocean, and suffered a similarly uneventful and confusing day.

The third night that Claude was in tow, he woke to the sound of a hiss behind him. He was rising instantly, with a fear of breaching whales toppling him into the sea, but the noise hadn’t been strong enough to signal that... Instead he caught sight of a large mass of matted green, a pale profile of a human face, and a flash of an inhuman eye catching the faint light of the stars, before that creature descended into the black waters of the night.

Claude was huffing out half syllables; curses, and questions, and exclamations of disbelief. For the first time in days, he jumped to his feet atop the plank, and was surprised to find that he could, surfing in the darkness, gliding until it rocked stationary beneath him. He felt like his heart was going to hammer out of his chest.

He felt confident that he knew where his miraculous gifts had come from, and steadied himself down on one knee to collect the dagger. He had expected to die out here, but not at the hands of a monstrosity. Was he being fed and transported to a more appropriate location for the creature to feast? Claude could picture himself embraced by the beast as he reached out for the surface of the water, and didn’t sleep for the rest of the night, instead sitting at the centre of the plank, with his heels up in front of him. He didn’t want to touch more of the ocean than he had to, but was still too close to the surface for his liking. One shove and the plank would tip him into the ocean, and the reach of the strange creature he’d seen.

The sunrise came, and he felt a little safer for it. Disgusted with the act, and with himself, he ate another fish from the creature’s offering, hoping to stave off exhaustion while he watched the surface with a fear still running through his heart that put the Flame Emperor to shame.

Claude was having trouble deciding on a plan. He didn’t know whether the creature was nocturnal, or cursed in a way that kept it from daylight, or if it simply hadn’t yet approached him during the day. His eyes were drooping closed every few minutes, and balancing on the plank – standing, sitting, kneeling, squatting – had left his legs feeling rubbery and weak.

Settling down to where his legs hung in the water, Claude tried to conserve what strength he could in case he needed to kick the creature away, or otherwise put up a fight.

Claude meant to sigh, but it came out as half a yawn, his hold on the dagger wavering in a weary hand. His slip of concentration meant that the blade bobbed towards his left side, nicking the flesh over his collarbone in a way that stung so badly that his fatigue died instantly.

As such, he was fully present when he saw a head of unnatural pink hair breach the water. His throat suddenly dry, Claude swallowed and nearly sent himself into a coughing fit. Nowhere to back up against, he was already cornered and exposed. He clenched the dagger before he really processed what he was looking at.

The creature had a kind face. Large pink eyes that flickered as they analyzed him, worry or pity in her gaze.

“Hello.”

Claude gasped. Somehow, he hadn’t expected her to speak.

“You’ve hurt yourself.” Claude looked down to where the dagger had scratched him and then back to the creature. “I have some friends who could help with that. If you let us?”

Claude put the dagger in his left hand and held his chest with his right, putting pressure around his minor injury. His voice rasped and sounded more foreign to him than the creature as he asked, “Friends?”

She smiled, the threat of her sharp crooked teeth causing Claude to purse his lips. She looked smug, and about what, hadn’t yet felt revealed to him. It made him nervous.

“That might be the wrong word,” she allowed. “My name is Hilda.”

“Claude,” he croaked.

Her brow wrinkled in confusion. “Why do you sound like that?”

Claude couldn’t help the way his cheeks tightened in amusement. Her lack of understanding made him feel a little more in control, and her continued interest in his well-being was starting to feel less and less malicious. “Dehydrated.”

Her eyes widened in horror. “Then drink! Or do you need more fresh water? We can help with that too.”

Claude shook his head, but not in protest. He bit the hilt of the dagger between his teeth, still unwilling to leave it on the plank, within reach of the creatures, as he did as he was told. He retrieved the jug, and juggling it, the plug and the dagger, he downed the rest of the water, nearly half the container. Even if there would be no more, he couldn’t fool himself with it any longer.

Hilda was pleased and curious, watching this creature take water into their body in such a strange way, unable to saturate themselves in their diet and the ocean the same way she could.

“Better?”

“Better,” Claude agreed, his voice sounding clearer too. He ran his left hand down the back of the blade as he settled upon a direct question. “What do you eat?”

She shifted in the water, taken aback. “Fish?”

“So meat?”

“Yes, but not only. There are plants on the seabed.”

“Not people?”

Hilda squawked a laugh before covering her mouth with a hand, clearly embarrassed, and the action was so personable that Claude was chuckling even as she answered, “No, we don’t eat people.”

“Okay,” he agreed. He’d heard enough wives’ tales and sailors’ superstitions about sirens and sea ghosts and other phenomena pulling one to one’s death, but somehow, he felt mollified. “Okay, so, if I agreed to meet your friends – you wouldn’t be dragging me to the ocean floor to meet them?”

Hilda shook her head and submerged herself. When she surfaced again it was much closer than previously, about ten feet away, and she wasn’t alone.

“Claude, this is Lorenz.”

The second face was longer, paler, but his hair and eyes were purple, and decidedly not those of the creature Claude had seen last night.

From this distance, Claude could see that both Hilda and Lorenz were beautiful. Hilda’s shining smile made his heart fearful again, that he was submitting to monsters of voracious appetite, but, the contrast between her amusement and the skepticism that played on Lorenz’s features, made this feel less likely – what story ever told of skeptic monsters?

“Lean down,” Lorenz ordered as he and Hilda approached. “I will not bob up to meet you.”

Hilda elbowed him, and Lorenz closed his eyes as he grunted.

“I mean that it is a relief to meet you, and that you haven’t yet stabbed anyone but yourself. Please let me help you.”

They weren’t swimming, so far as Claude could tell, or at least, they needed no propulsion from their arms as they continued to only breach the water as far as the tips of their shoulders as they advanced towards him.

Slowly, Claude balanced himself on the plank, leaning himself into Lorenz’s outstretched hand. He raised a curious eyebrow when Lorenz blushed at the contact, but before he could question it, a white glow emanated from Lorenz’s hand and Claude felt his whole shoulder go numb. He flinched.

“What is–?”

“It’s alright,” Lorenz promised, reaching out his opposite hand as if to stay Claude’s fear, but not touching him with this hand.

A pulsing heat chased the pins and needles, and Claude watched as the light faded, taking the sensation with it.

“There now,” Lorenz said with finality as he took his hand away, and Claude ducked his head to examine himself. He ran a finger over where blood had bloomed a moment ago, and felt the faintest scar tissue, but saw no traces of the cut that had been there, nor the sunburns that had covered this side of his chest. While looking down like this, Claude saw Lorenz’s hand hover over his thigh before pulling back with pinched fingers. “A little more comfortable, I hope? Even with the condition of your … boat?”

Claude nodded. “Thank you. I wish I had anything to offer you, in exchange.”

“Information?” Lorenz suggested, shifting away from Claude and the plank. “What are you doing here?”

The question was asked with so much incredulous verve that Claude snorted bitterly.

“I’m not here by choice.”

“That much is obvious.”

Claude sighed. “There’s a war, and my side is losing. I followed a friend’s poor impulse decision, and we both paid for it. I was left here to die by my enemies.”

Lorenz and Hilda shared a look. So many foreign concepts, decidedly human in nature as per their teachings, that marked Claude as a violent man.

Lorenz adjusted his hair, considering what best to do while he felt Fae skirting around the surface of the water, eager to interact despite the danger.

“A grim fate they left you to. Have the fish helped?”

“I–?” Claude hesitated, confused, but then he smiled again. “Yes, I might have died before now if it weren’t for the fish and freshwater. Thank you.”

“Would you trust us to bring more, then?”

“I would be grateful if you did, but–”

“No,” Lorenz insisted, cutting him off. “We will bring you more, but you must give back the dagger.”

Claude’s smile only grew, because this situation was one he was more accustomed to, with a surge of confidence and energy, he twirled the offending weapon in hand so that the blade went from pointing skyward to towards the ocean.

“I’ll give back your dagger, after you answer some of my questions.”

Lorenz looked to Hilda, exasperated, but she was smiling again, tilting her head at him before answering Claude, “That’s only fair.”

“Where were you taking me?”

“There’s a human settlement a few days away, we thought we’d bring you there,” Hilda explained.

“So you know you’re not human?” Claude prompted.

Lorenz scoffed. “Decidedly not.”

“Then why help me?”

Lorenz looked ashamed for a moment and Hilda raised a hand to his face. He leaned into and then away from the touch, a gesture Claude was unsure he completely understood.

“Our friend thought it was the right thing to do. I would have left you,” Lorenz admitted. “We’ve only heard horror stories of interacting with humans. Nets and tubs and knives.”

Claude looked down to the blade in his open palm for a moment, appreciating the risks they had taken, and the depth of this kindness.

“I’ll have to thank your friend sometime then.”

He threw the dagger into the water between him and the others, and expected one of the pair of them to dive in its retrieval, but neither of them moved, revealing instead that their friend was nearby.

“ _They_ would like that,” Lorenz confirmed, a little flat.

His eyes widened as they started to breach the surface, and he swam forward, to be in line with them and Hilda, as he watched Claude’s empty hands carefully.

Claude saw the figure rising next to Hilda, and swung his leg over the opposite side of the plank to face the creatures, holding the edge of the wood as he braced himself to see something of the beast from last night – but then they were smiling at him, teeth as sharp as Hilda’s, and he felt his heart patter until he relaxed.

Just as beautiful as the other two, ethereal and strange, with large green eyes to match their pale green hair. Claude found himself chuckling, relaxed and manic after his earlier anxiety.

“I take it, that's you?”

With a nod, they approached the plank. “My name is Faedolyn.” Claude shrunk back, hands raised by his sides for balance as Faedolyn placed their hands on his knees. He watched where their body disappeared under the water as a large dark shape moved below them, and swallowed. “I’m sorry to have frightened you last night.”

“I was just … surprised,” Claude argued, sneering.

“And now?”

Hilda and Lorenz came up behind them, and Claude couldn’t help feeling cornered again. Still, he answered with a wink. “Wary. Not afraid.”

“Then would you join us for a short while? We’ll heal the rest of your injuries, and you can see us for what we are?”

Claude swallowed as he wondered whether it really was so simple to tempt him to his death.

“And what are you?”

“Mermaids.” They swam away from him then, giving him room to join them.

Claude smiled, his lips falling open in true surprise as he passed a hand over his mouth and his beard. He nodded as he pulled his shirt from his head, shoving it into his pants beside him on the plank, and took a large nervous breath as he propelled himself into the ocean.

What he saw had him lose that breath of air instantly and he surfaced, gasping, before descending again. This time, he was also met with Faedolyn pressing a finger to his forehead, from which another soft light glowed. He found that he could now freely open his eyes, and that the pressure and sting of the saltwater passed over his ears and nose with none of its usual discomfort, which really allowed him to process what he was looking at.

They let him swim between them as he looked on in wonder, and Hilda made a noise that was unmistakably inhuman, and suddenly they were speaking around him, in clicks and squeaks and long throaty noises.

From the waist up, they could pass for humans. From her hips to the top of her head, Hilda’s upper body was about two and half feet tall, with Fae being only a few inches taller. The three of them were unclothed, but adorned with bags and satchels either on their backs or slung around their tails, and so Claude could see that they had belly buttons and nipples and smooth freckled skin.

Hilda was chubby with muscle and fat that flowed into the swell of her tail. She had glittering metallic pieces woven into the bags and loops of material that hung on her tail, and supported a number of bone implements that Claude did not doubt she had the power to devastate with. Her tail from the waist down was about five feet in length, hers and her friends’ smooth and thick; they looked like what Claude would expect of whales and thick blubber, while also possessing fins that were more akin to fish.

Hilda’s tail reminded him of a koi. White and blotched pink, orange and black. She had twin butterfly fins hanging off either hip, two on either side, and three more in a line just above her fluke.

Faedolyn’s tail was similar in length, a pale green opal up close to their waistline that was a deep verdant green by the base of their tail. The base of it seemed to still contain the anatomy of a fluke, but then bloomed out in extra adornment; the fin expanding so that it reminded Claude of a fighting fish. Swimming around Faedolyn revealed that they had a similar blossoming fin following from where their tail began to about halfway down its length.

Their body was leaner than Hilda’s, but strong too, muscular even before their tail.

They and Hilda were intimidating enough, but Lorenz was another matter entirely. His upper half was about three feet in length, and it was almost comic that he seemed to be wearing something of a backpack, pikes and supplies extending horizontally out the base of it. As his body was tight and slender, the swell of his tail was all the more striking.

Lorenz’s tail was about seven feet long, fat and powerful and covered in large flowing fins and long intimidating barbs, like a zebra turkeyfish. His lower half was covered in black stripes, the base of him varying shades of purple, from powder pale to nearly black, and Claude had to wonder whether he was poisonous to touch.

The scale of the seamonsters before him was staggering. He felt very small as he settled between them. Faedolyn lay their hand on his chest, and his heart hammered as if in warning. Lorenz somehow lowered himself so that he could coil his hands on Claude’s left thigh with a frown, and Hilda too pressed her fingers around the back of his neck from behind. Then their hands were aglow in that white light, and Claude faltered as he could feel it happening; the sunburns, the sores from the pock marked wood, and any other little recent scratch being healed on his person, by magic.

They spun him about playfully, Hilda chasing his every position, speaking to him in a tongue he could not understand as they caressed his body, invigorating him after all he’d been through, restoring him to a healthier degree, though they could do nothing for his starvation or fatigue.

He and Hilda were upside down, feet and tail toward the surface, when Claude pulled away, in need of another gasp of air.

They surfaced all around him, more distant that they’d been underwater, and Claude laughed at the improbability of his situation.

“Mermaids,” he said in wonder.

Lorenz bristled, and wrapped his arms around Fae’s shoulders from behind, his hands curling around them. “We will not bring you back to humanity only to have you hunt us. There is an agreement that in accepting our aid that you won’t simply return to harm us.”

“That’s fine,” Claude giggled, bobbing in the water, winking at Lorenz. “I’m good with secrets.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope you're enjoying this so far! I'd love a kudos or comment (especially if you're a guest)! <3
> 
> I will update tags and the rating as we progress, because I am practically incapable of writing a fic without smut. I will not go too heavy on monster-anatomy when that happens.
> 
> For anyone waiting on other fics, rest assured that I'm 8k into my as of yet incomplete first draft of the final chapter of [Just Go With It](https://archiveofourown.org/works/21423745), and will continue following my outline for [I Wanna Be Yours](https://archiveofourown.org/works/22716091).
> 
> Stay safe during the covid-19 situation! Wash your hands!


	2. Wading Into It

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Have [a pintrest board of the tails the mermaids are based on!](https://www.pinterest.ca/omgFaedolyn/mermaid-au/)

Fae leaned back in Lorenz’s embrace, clearly amused, and even now, their smile seemed less foreign to Claude than a minute ago. “Now that’s exciting.”

Claude jolted himself back in the water, away from the slithery sweep of Fae’s tail that they had tickled across his skin from the angle they lounged in.

“Because you hope to take them from me?” he asked, taunting them as he would any adversary.

Fae was incredulous. They looked up to Lorenz, who shrugged and released them as they straightened their tail. They swam forward until they were very close to Claude’s face, large green eyes searching him for … something.

“Is that what it means to be human? That everything you have is at risk of being stolen? Your boat? Your knives? Your secrets?”

They swam a circle around Claude that initially had him feeling nervous again, before he was reminded of dolphins beside great ships, twirling around each other as a social form of play. He didn’t feel as if Fae were stalking him so much as they were simply using a different set of rules of communication.

“Sometimes,” Claude agreed, “but... I suppose it doesn’t mean much to say that I have no intention of trying to take anything of yours.”

Fae hummed as Hilda joined them in chasing circles around Claude. He made a note that Lorenz grimaced, and wondered what he could do to make himself appear less of a threat than he already felt.

“I only meant it was exciting,” Fae continued, “that if you’re speaking the truth and have so many secrets, that you would be sharing one with us now also. It sounds like an honor.”

They stopped somewhere behind Claude, between him and his plank, and he heard them giggle as Hilda bumped into them.

Hesitantly, Claude turned from Lorenz, to face the others, and heard Lorenz submerge himself. Claude’s eyes crossed a little when he tried to focus on them.

Hilda pouted sympathetically. “You need to sleep.” Claude opened his mouth to speak but accidentally got a mouthful of salt water, bobbing in the ocean with his tired arms. He was shocked by the coordinated effort that Hilda and Fae shared as they each reached out an arm to steady him; their hands on his sides so that he could hold onto their elbows, propping himself up above the waterline, coughing away the ocean.

Lorenz was pulling at Claude’s things on the plank, so that when Claude was starting to recompose himself he asked, “What are you doing?”

He worried that Lorenz was taking away his food and water, until he remembered he’d finished the latter. Still, it didn’t settle the sinking feeling he had when Lorenz took his things below water.

“We’re just trying to help you,” Fae promised, flexing their hand on Claude’s side.

A moment later Lorenz surfaced close to Claude’s left side, and he looked from him to Fae and Hilda in exasperation. “Surely, he can support himself by now?”

Fae smiled, as if trying to ease Lorenz, before asking Claude, “Can you?”

Claude nodded, letting go and bracing himself to slide into the water. His whole head submerged for a moment, but it was welcome, cool against where the sun was catching his dark hair, and when he came back up, Lorenz was holding out his clothing to him.

He sighed. “You should redress. There’s no sense having that board cut you up like that again.”

“Oh.” Claude accepted his things. “But, the water—?”

“I have some here for you,” Lorenz assured him, holding up the jug, “but I imagine you can’t drink it until you’re back on your … boat.” Claude made this abundantly clear as he slipped beneath the surface again as he struggled with his pants. When he seemed steady, Lorenz continued, “I’ll keep the fish with me, for convenience. You can drop your line into the ocean and tug on it whenever you need food or water. We will bring it to you.”

“We’ll worry about the rest of it later,” Fae said firmly, and Claude assumed this would have been directed at him, in answer to questions about travel and whether they intended to keep hiding from him beyond this agreement, but he quickly saw that their order was being given to Lorenz who exhaled sharply and nodded. “We’re all tired.”

“When do you usually sleep?” Claude asked.

“We don’t sleep like you do,” Hilda answered. “We’re half-awake and moving when we rest.”

She held onto Claude’s plank from the opposite side as he clambered back atop it, keeping the board steady and easing his climb.

“We sleep in shifts,” Fae continued, as Lorenz handed Claude the water jug. “Usually while the sun is up. It’s easier to hunt at night.”

“We would all be awake before the sun sets though,” Hilda added.

“Okay,” Claude laughed, caught again by the strangeness of his situation, and this conversation. “Then … I’ll see you in a few hours?”

Fae hummed softly, nodding. “Yes.”

“Rest well,” Hilda called, before dipping back into the depths.

“Goodbye,” Fae said next.

Lorenz tilted his head awkwardly, and Claude couldn’t help a snicker as the final of the mermaids slipped back beneath the waves.

Claude rolled on his side and bat at the rope on his plank, watching it uncoil on the surface and descend into the ocean, and when he felt it had sunk as much as it would without guidance, he plunged his hand into the water again to grab hold of it, and pull it up towards him by a foot or two.

It was barely a moment before Lorenz was back, surfacing just below where Claude was laid on the plank.

“More to drink?” he asked, and Claude didn’t answer him initially. He simply smiled, and watched Lorenz’s brow furrow in confusion and his cheeks redden in a blush.

“Just … testing the waters,” Claude teased, and he was surprised when Lorenz smiled too, sharp teeth glittering in the midday sun.

“Alright,” Lorenz agreed. “Now rest. I will be as real to you afterwards as I am to you now.”

Claude winked, and Lorenz rolled his eyes and descended back below the surface.

Claude wrapped his shirt around his head again, hiding his brain from the sun as much as he could, wondering about the discomfort of the plank on his back, and whether his new friends would be offended that he might so readily spoil their healing gift.

It was an easy thing to sleep, with suddenly far less fear about being tipped into the ocean.

The sun was just starting to set, the sky pink and purple and powder blue when Claude woke, and he had to wonder whether it was even the same day, feeling so disoriented and as though he’d slept so long. His legs dangled in the ocean to either side of the plank, and as he sat up he swung both onto the same side so that he could stare into the eastern horizon where some stars were starting to come into view.

He was afraid. That what he was experiencing was real. That it was hallucination. He was afraid for his friends and his people, all out of reach. If he really survived this, and ended up in some small “human settlement,” would it even be a place with access to ships and trade? Or just a fishing village, _maybe_ with annual trips to some mainland? It was easier before, to think of his scenario as personal, and an attack on his life, but if he had to face people again, or even mermaids, it exposed how others had relied on him, and made him anxious about what he owed people.

He was afraid because there was hope.

He pulled on the rope in the water, and waited.

Lorenz and Hilda surfaced first, and though they were smiling, lips sealed, Claude was surprised that he could recognize that the expressions were masks, as they looked him over, searching for threats.

“Hi,” Hilda greeted, as she gestured with her hands below water to signal to Fae that the situation was the same, safe as it was.

“Hi,” Claude chuckled.

Water was still pouring off Fae’s face as they asked, “Did you dream well?”

Claude thought of how when a human would blow and sputter the water away from themselves before speaking and let his mouth tighten in amusement.

“Just sleep,” he answered, extending a hand to accept the water jug from Lorenz. “No dreams.”

“Are you ready to eat?” asked Lorenz.

“I should eat,” Claude agreed, uncertain if he could feel ready for another consecutive day of raw fish.

“When you’re done, we’ll start moving you,” Hilda said warmly.

“The current pulls us off course when we’re sleeping,” Fae contributed as Claude watched Lorenz hold a wriggling fish at the surface of the water, the strength of his grip and nails clear as he started to cut into the creature with a different bone knife than the one they’d previously given to Claude. “But now that we’re not hiding from you, it should be much faster than it would have been; as long as we get in more than a few hours of travel each night.”

Claude nodded distractedly as he watched Lorenz fillet the fish with a few quick snaps of his wrist.

“Good enough?” Lorenz extended the fish towards Claude as if for inspection.

Claude accepted the fish with a smile. He tried to sound curious, rather than accusatory, as he observed, “That looked practiced.”

“I eat every day,” Lorenz responded, his eyes squinted in confusion. Hilda giggled.

Claude grimaced through a mouthful of fish, and took another drag of the water, held between his knees, before he explained, “I would have thought you’d just … bite into them.”

“Our throats couldn’t handle the bones,” Hilda explained.

“More?” Lorenz prompted.

“No,” Claude answered, tossing the bones and extras into the ocean behind him. “I don’t think I could stomach it. Maybe in a few hours?”

Hilda frowned. “Couldn’t stomach it?” she echoed. “Well, what do _you_ eat?”

Claude thought for a moment of the dry and disappointing rations usually left to ships, before letting his mouth water at the idea of a proper meal of spiced roast and gravy.

“I do eat fish,” Claude admitted, “but usually it’s cooked.” The mermaids’ expressions twisted in discomfort. “Or at least prepared,” Claude added, dreamily. “With oils and vegetables. Grains. Seasonings.”

“I’ll see if I can find something else,” Lorenz said, quick and professional, as if this weren’t an act of kindness. “Later.”

Claude widened his eyes in excitement at the prospect of leaving the isolation of the ocean — even as social as the ocean was becoming. He let the mermaids direct him, at first to sit atop the plank, but then as they gained momentum he was standing, balanced and bracing himself by carefully holding onto his line of rope so that it was something like surfing. He was sure they hadn’t been moving him around like this before, with a speed to rival ships, and gossiping just below the surface, so that he could catch fragments of their songs under the ripples of rushing water.

They would slow when the mermaids would change places, the trio rotating between two of them holding the base of the plank in their hands and pulling Claude forward. It was not a form of labor the mermaids were familiar with, but they kept it up at a comfortable pace for a few hours before needing a break.

The sun was gone over the horizon, but the sky was still that murky blue-green, where it remembered its kiss of light. They were travelling north-west, and Claude might’ve lost track of time on their travel if it weren’t for the winking stars overhead. The sky was darker behind him than it was ahead, but that didn’t hide the familiar constellations from Claude’s searching eyes, and he couldn’t help his smile at the wonder of his situation, the curve of his mouth only widening when the mermaids surfaced, their bodies still heaving for breath from their exercise, catching the light so that they were strange silhouettes.

They could be leading him to his death, but Claude did feel better for the company, rather than only the unexplained gift of fish, or the terrible promise of death and starvation. He carefully moved to sit on the plank and watched as Hilda shared a laugh with Lorenz as Fae adjusted their long green tangles at the surface of the water.

“Exhilarating,” Fae said as if in celebration.

“Exhausting,” Hilda whined, jutting her head forward in exaggeration.

“Sorry,” Claude apologized. “I guess I’m pretty heavy, huh?”

“You’re fine,” Fae laughed. “We’re just not used to it.”

“I have a few days of supplies,” Lorenz contributed more seriously, moving to offer Claude the jug of water while he addressed Fae. “Should I go foraging while you and Hilda rest?”

“Tomorrow?” Fae suggested.

“No.” Lorenz objected instantly, twitching an arm nervously towards his chest as he elaborated, “Uh. I said I’d look for something. Just give me—”

“Later then?” Fae interrupted. “I don’t want to rest too long while the weather is this good.”

Claude looked around as he drank, uncertain if Fae was suggesting the weather might turn sour. He hadn’t noticed a change in wind or waves, and was relieved to see all the sky smiling back at him.

He was touched that Lorenz would still be thinking of his whining, and tried to assure him. “I wouldn’t hold you to that.”

Lorenz tilted his head and widened his eyes, looking unimpressed. “You’re looking ill. Unless bags under your eyes and a gaunt appearance is your usual state.” He sighed, resting his hand on the plank. “A varied diet might help.”

Claude tucked away his realizations on how detailed he must appear in his current state to subsea night hunters, and shrugged. “If you want to spoil me that’s on you.”

As Claude winked at Lorenz, flustering him, Hilda bobbed up to Claude’s other side, adding casually for her partner’s benefit, “You worry too much. At least his heartbeat’s improved.”

Lorenz knew that this was a subtle jab about his own heartbeat and removed his arm from the plank as he propelled himself away with a harrumph.

“My heartbeat?” Claude asked, his curiosity piqued.

Hilda’s smile waned, and she had a conflicted expression when her gaze fell on Claude, but he couldn’t tell, the growing darkness hiding her features. He could see the way her white tail seemed to glow just under the surface of the water however; because of her coloration, rather than bioluminescence. The silence of the lapping water echoed for a moment, keeping Claude in suspense.

“Our hands can sense vibrations and changes in pressure and other stuff we might need to know in the water. When you dangle your legs like this,” she gestured to where Claude’s knee bent, and his calf in the ocean, “you send out signals for hundreds of meters.”

Claude had to keep himself from trying to fold his legs somehow, there wasn’t room for it, but he did shift uncomfortably, blushing when Hilda laughed at him. “Good to know.”

“We can read even more about a person by touching them,” she went on. “So usually, we keep our hands to ourselves except for parents and partners.”

Lorenz bobbed deeper into the water as Fae came up behind him, pushing down on both of his shoulders before wrapping their arms around his neck, and Claude had to wonder if the look Fae’s face was sumptuous or whether he was projecting. Either way, it did add context to some of the touches he’d witnessed the three of them share, and to the healing they’d offered him. He wondered how much more exposed he should be feeling.

“I see,” Claude said.

“We would heal others of our kind if they needed it, not all touch is intimate,” Fae insisted, even as Lorenz plucked their right arm from around himself as if in surprise.

“ **When** have you had to do that?”

Fae giggled, their left hand drifting across his back as they swam around him. “I haven’t, but I’m saying I would.”

“We’re not solitary creatures,” Hilda said to Claude. “It would be unusual for us to be somewhere where we could be injured without,” she shrugged, “a trusted person to do the healing.”

“Then—?” Claude hesitated. “I thought you were only asking me to keep you a secret from other humans. I imagine your people wouldn’t be very impressed with our encounter either?”

“No,” Fae agreed.

“But we would hardly expect you to ever have a conversation with another mermaid,” Lorenz said frankly.

Claude scoffed. “No, me neither.” He smiled and the moon caught his teeth before he started fussing, pulling himself into his shirt, cold and damp in the night air. “Although, I didn’t initiate these conversations. Who’s to say whether another mermaid might not also one day find me so irresistible?”

“You’re fun,” Fae said, swimming forward. “I expected you to feel more helpless.”

“You invigorate me,” Claude teased, winking.

Hilda bit her bottom lip as she shared a look with Fae before turning back to Claude. “Alright, we’ll give you a few minutes of privacy while we eat and then we’ll come back to offer you more water and head out again.”

“Thank you.”

Claude found it much more unsettling to travel on the uneven and unpredictable surface of the ocean through the dark of night. He wondered whether the mermaids could sense his apprehension, or whether he was exhausting them, as they moved slower this time, still faster than he or most any human could swim, but at a pace where Claude felt safe sitting on the plank, leaning back on a wrist as he kept balance.

It would be hours before they broke again, finding a calm spot of water where Claude would be safe to eat. Halfway through his fish, he asked, “How can you tell the direction? Without the sun or the stars?”

“The ocean?” Fae answered, as if confused. “Below water, we can just … see. The … the sight bends depending on the direction. You don’t see that?”

Claude was swallowing and shaking his head when Hilda swam closer to him, saying, “I like that. That being from land means you have to look up to know where you're going.”

Lorenz frowned. “What do you do if it’s cloudy?”

Claude laughed. “Struggle.” He went on to explain maps, and math, and compasses, prompting Hilda to speak of magnetic jewellery and decor. In the midst of their conversation, Claude sputtered from the cold, and the mermaids straightened where they swam.

“Sorry,” Claude said reflexively, running a hand across his mouth and nose, being reminded of beard growth and uncleanliness. “I’m not used to being saturated for so long.”

“Are you ill?” Fae worried.

“I should go foraging,” Lorenz said again.

“Come here,” Hilda beckoned, and Claude found that he was pushing himself off the plank without reservation, hopeful and curious as to whether the mermaids could keep him from dying of pneumonia.

Fae pulled on Lorenz as they moved to where Hilda held one arm behind Claude, and her left hand in the center of his chest, ‘listening,’ after a fashion, to his lungs and heartbeat. She shook her head at her partners as a dismissal, a half-reassurance.

In the ocean, Hilda could feel the way sweat poured off of Claude’s body and raised her hand up to wrap around his forehead, finding him warm and clammy. “Why didn’t you say anything?”

Claude huffed a single, weak laugh as his vision white out from the healing pouring off of Hilda’s hand. “When would I have said something?” He tilted his head away from her as he coughed and raised his right hand as if to touch her wrist, before wondering about their customs again, and letting his hand fall back into the water as he kicked himself upwards. “Would you believe I forgot?”

“You forgot you were unwell?” Fae accused, releasing Lorenz as Hilda lowered her hand, magic dismissed.

“I was ignoring it.” He intended to shrug, but the ocean stole a lot of his nonverbal communication.

“He’s too cold,” Hilda said, eyeing Lorenz.

“At this depth?” Lorenz gawked, giving Claude a once over. He rolled his eyes as he weaved forward and pressed a large open hand on Claude’s chest, a bloom of red light curling around the sides of his palm and fingers.

Claude gasped in surprise, floundering to pull his right arm from behind Hilda and his left up from where he tried to provide some support to keep his head above water. He clasped both hands around Lorenz’s wrist, trying to sneak his thumbs between Lorenz’s palm and his own chest, to touch his frozen fingers to that magically warm offering.

The red light from Lorenz’s hand caught in his pupils, rings of purple around widening circles of gold, and Lorenz pulled his hand far enough away so that he could let Claude take hold of him with both sets of frigid fingers.

“His—?” Lorenz hesitated, swallowing and wrapping his left hand around the backs of Claude’s curled hands, adding to the magical warmth. “Your circulation is bad,” he said, plaintive.

“I’ve survived worse than this,” Claude said with a smile, but his eyes were tired and sunken. He thought of other threatened moments of his life, with no one to worry over him. Even if his body was deciding to shut down beyond the mermaids’ capabilities, being coddled like this was … more than he felt he deserved.

The mermaids worried amongst each other. Lorenz was objecting to Fae foraging in his stead, and so Hilda was agreeing to go. Claude squeezed on Lorenz’s hands as Hilda let go of him, so that he submerged for a second as she and Fae swam a little circle around each other, touching one another’s elbows and fingers before Hilda headed off into the deep.

Fae was behind Claude then, their arms around his chest as they kept him steady, kissing Lorenz once over his shoulder, so that Claude couldn’t help a giggle, tempted to crane his neck to kiss Lorenz’s cheek as it drifted past him. It tickled him to think that even with whatever significance they placed on touch, it seemed kisses probably still held importance too.

“Tell us about what you’ve survived?” Lorenz suggested, placing his hands over Claude’s ears, loose enough that Claude could still hold his hands over them, thumbs on the warm, red light on the underside of his palms.

“I don’t…” Claude trailed off, surprised that Lorenz was still looking at him, eyes on his mouth. Claude smiled sadly. “I wouldn’t be a man of secrets if I gave up my stories so easily.”

“We get it,” Fae said, rubbing three of their fingers in a circle on his chest. “You’re used to being cheeky.”

“Do you know what an heir is?” Claude asked, and his mouth stretched in amusement when Lorenz’s gaze flashed up to his eyes, clearly answering his question in the affirmative.

“Yes,” Fae answered. “In fact—” Lorenz looked to them anxiously, and Claude felt Fae shift, “we use something of an inheritance system where we’re from.”

“I was one of seven possible heirs to a faraway kingdom. One brother, and five half-siblings, and I’m the youngest. We don’t ascend by virtue of being the eldest but … I still shouldn’t have been a threat to any of them…” Claude let his eyes close, there was something freeing about confessing things to strangers who would likely never see him or his enemies after they parted. Lorenz’s hands moved from Claude’s ears, down the sides of his neck, and Fae adjusted their grip so he could lay them open on the front of Claude’s chest. “My mother, my brother and I ... we struggled between recognition and obscurity. Living outside of the castle proper, hidden among the populace… I wasn’t raised as a prince, and knowing most of my siblings … I don’t think I’d have wanted to be. My first assassination attempt came while I was still in the womb, but I think I was about six during the ugliest one? Maybe four?”

“Are you out here because of an assassination attempt?” asked Fae.

Claude chuckled. “You know? Sort of. Only I’d hoped to be the one doing the assassinating.”

He let the mermaids help him back onto the plank, rolling his pants up so that magically warm hands could rest atop his feet and around his ankles. He told them about the death of his brother, about leaving Almyra and coming to Fodlan, about the animosity between Faerghus and Adrestia, and the irreconcilable relationship between Edelgard and Dimitri. Inadvertently, he told them about how he mourned, for his brother and for the victims of his current war, about his fears and about his strengths, military victories that felt like losses and victories won without a single drop of blood shed because of a few well placed bribes and promises. And they were listening, well after Hilda had returned.

Claude had to turn down her offerings: something that looked like a three foot translucent millipede, a variety of plant-life too sturdy for his jaw to manage, one of which he was pretty sure would sting him, and some thick, verdant seaweed that felt like it would similar to eating a raw banana leaf.

“Well, we’re getting closer to shallower waters all the time,” Hilda said. “You’ll have more familiar options then.”

“We’ll go slower,” Fae offered. “Like we did those first nights when you didn’t know of us. You get some sleep.”

“If we’ve stopped by the time you wake, pull on your tether,” Lorenz requested, revealing his concern.

“Thank you,” Claude said, both in answer and in general. He frowned at Hilda, “I’m sorry that—”

“It’s fine. I didn’t know what I was looking for anyway,” she insisted, self-defeating in a way that still had Claude feeling guilty.

“You’ll be home soon,” Fae said, as if trying to soothe both Claude and Hilda.

“As dangerous as that sounds,” Lorenz agreed.

“I’d be better off with the danger-I-know,” Claude assured him.

The mermaids pressed on in their journey, Fae and Lorenz pushing on the plank as they asked Hilda if she’d seen signs of other mermaids, schools of fish or prawns, but she had her own questions, and they ended up spending just as much time retelling bits and pieces of Claude’s history.

“He’s kind,” Lorenz allowed, “if he’s honest. Burdened by the world around him. I wonder if all other humans would seem much the same.”

“I doubt it,” Fae disagreed. “Not **all** , anyway. He might not be unique, but it seems not all of our horror stories are exaggerated.”

Claude woke stationary, or as still as the unsteady surface of the ocean allowed. The sun was warm on his eyelids, and rising, he could see that it was a quarter of the way into the sky. He took a few minutes to himself, and then a few more to try and stand on his own, without the rope and momentum of the mermaids to help him, just to try to feel the use of his legs.

Ocean spray erupted around him during his second fall, the result of an embarrassing attempt that left salt water frothing around him. The tickling of the bubbles against his skin was soon replaced with the scrape of the wood, and the board creaked under Claude’s arms so that his eyes widened in horror. He couldn’t imagine surviving even a day treading water, or any solution to that predicament that the mermaids could come up with.

Hilda surfaced opposite him, smiling when he didn’t startle.

“Good morning,” she greeted, advancing.

“Heh, hi.” Claude let himself slip back into the water, just barely resting an arm on the plank for support.

“Feeling better?” She cocked her elbow under his, so that Claude released the plank. He swallowed about the build of her arms, certainly more than his own, especially after these days at sea.

“Better than I was expecting,” he answered cryptically, and he was surprised when she laughed softly, waving her tail towards him so that the current pushed him away, just a little.

Claude watched as Hilda worked at the strap on one of her bags, a woven, fibrous length of seaweed and noticed that her nails were clean and filed, and solid, unlike his own saturated hands. “You have a lot of patience,” he licked his salt-cracked lips, “dealing with my frailties.”

Hilda looped the seaweed around the end of his plank, binding it together and building an itchy cushion. She rolled her eyes, long lashes fluttering. “Uh-huh.” She spun about and used her tail to push herself close to him, arms back and to her sides, hands hovering over her weapons. “You can play coy with me if you want. But I won’t be letting my guard down.”

While he suspected the ocean would do nothing to slow a blow if Hilda decided to strike him, Claude found himself smiling in the wake of her warning, and blushing about her proximity. He was probably assuming too much, but he felt her gaze told him that he was safe so long as he kept his place. He felt more like he was being scolded by a loved one, rather than threatened by an adversary. “I wouldn’t expect you to.”

She turned away from him as she flitted her right hand towards the plank dismissively, hiding a blush and a smug expression. “Get on.”

Hilda submerged herself and pressed the flat of her hand on the base of the plank as it wobbled with Claude’s assent, but even from here she could tell it was easier with the hand-hold she’d created.

With an exerted sigh and a look of embarrassment Claude nodded to Hilda when she rose on the opposite side of the plank again. He ran a hand through his knotted hair and offered a hopeless wink. “Thank you.”

“You’re welcome.” A silence passed between them, and Hilda pouted as she moved to lean on her elbow at the base of the plank from where Claude was seated. “What’re you looking at me like that for?”

“Like what?” Claude laughed, curious. “And where else am I supposed to look?” he exaggerated, stretching out his arms precariously for a second as he gestured at the empty horizon. “You have to be the most interesting sight for miles around. Certainly the prettiest.”

“You’ll break Fae’s heart talking like that,” Hilda teased, her tail rising up out of the water behind herself so that sunlight reflected off the blotches of color.

“Well they’re not in sight,” Claude answered quickly. Hilda’s eyes blew wide, and Claude was raising his hands defensively. “Wait. Wait,” he begged. “I didn’t mean that as an insult. Only that they too, are beautiful. Lorenz also, if you need to tell him.”

He crossed his arms around himself to keep his balance, and Hilda giggled, shifting her chin from the inside of one palm to the back of her opposite hand.

“So who’s waiting for you back home?”

Claude’s mind went to two places, Dimitri captured by the empire, and his inner circle, his crew, where Leonie had likely taken charge, and where Lysithea waited alone in Adrestia. These weren't the answers that Hilda seemed to be hinting at however, and after a moment’s hesitation he answered, “No one.”

“Is that just how humans are?” she asked, considerate. “At a distance, what we see on ships and shorelines, you travel together, but you always seem … separate. Alone.”

Claude shook his head. “No. You’re just … seeing one aspect of the life of a very specific kind of person. We have whole families, and romantic affairs…” He shrugged, “And partnerships, like what you seem to have, but we generally don’t bring them to sea if we can help it. Too dangerous.”

“And still no one?” Hilda repeated, as if surprised.

“Friends,” Claude insisted, “but no family. And no lovers that I’d call partners.”

“But lovers?” She crossed her hands beneath her chin, smiling in a way that displayed her teeth as her partners surfaced around her.

“ **Friends** ,” Claude said again, more emphatically.

“Mm.” Hilda hummed skeptically, turning to her partners in greeting.

She took them each in arms and kissed them slowly, which they easily navigated around in terms of their conversation, with neither Fae nor Lorenz having any sort of surprised or adverse reactions, so that Claude had to wonder whether it was meant to taunt or establish dominance on Hilda’s part, or whether he was assuming too much self-importance, and that he simply hadn’t come into Hilda’s mind at all.

And then she’d winked at him. And there was no possibility that it had been the result of sea spray in **her** eyes.

The mermaids stopped more frequently this day to give Claude water, to check his temperature and heart, and perhaps just to indulge in conversation. Lorenz suggested he go hunting, but this time Claude talked him out of it, forewarning that if Lorenz found larger fish out in these deep waters, there would be the possibility that he wouldn’t be able to eat it anyway, with concerns of parasites.

Cloud cover offered some respite from the sun, but Claude had caught the mermaids eyeing the north from whence the clouds were coming, and could assume their worry.

That night as Claude slept, or lay watching where stars peeked through the canopy of an encroaching storm, the mermaids conversed far below him in the dark of the ocean, where they could just sense the heat of his body, the sweat on the skin, and the beat of his heart.

“We’re not going to make it,” Lorenz said, solemn. “What do you want to do?”

“I don’t know,” Fae conceded, defeated and heartbroken. “We can’t leave him.”

“The winds could pick up any time now. The storm is too big to miss us.” Lorenz squinted and swallowed. There was a trembling in his head, within his mouth and upon his brow. He whispered, “You don’t have to watch him die.”

“Lorenz,” Hilda scolded.

“We’ve done all we can,” he whined.

“He must’ve felt the air pressure change.” Fae spun in a circle, frustrated and anxious, their lustrous tail catching the faintest traces of light. “I don’t want us to leave him.”

“We’ll just head east then. For as long as we can,” Hilda suggested. “The storm won’t miss us, and we won’t be heading towards land, but maybe we can reach the outskirts, so that he’s only struck by rain, and not the winds that would drown him.”

“Claude?” 

Lorenz’s voice rang out before the sound of running water, dripping off the mermaids. Claude couldn’t help being startled by the noise, with a gasp and a kick, he nearly toppled himself into the ocean. One of the mermaids held him still however, and Lorenz asked, sounding faintly amused, “Were you expecting someone else?”

“No, uh,” he chuckled, finding his balance, but having trouble seeing the mermaids, moonlight scarce through the clouds overhead, “sorry.”

“We’re going to try and outrun the storm,” Fae said. “You might have to forgo sleeping for safety, but we won’t stop until we’re out of line with it.”

A soft choked noise escaped Claude’s throat. He was surprised the mermaids were addressing the storm now, when they could see him and while his eyes darted around in the darkness. He swallowed and nodded, acknowledging with a weak smile, “I’m at your mercy.”

Lorenz closed his eyes again, feeling Fae and Hilda look at him. They held Claude in place while Lorenz went to wiring one of his pikes through the seaweed Hilda had wrapped on the plank earlier. Hilda gave Claude warning before she struck his plank from beneath, a strong, careful chop of an axe to set up a second hand-hold, while the mermaids set up a more efficient means of dragging him across the surface of the water.

The sky was grey. Sunrise was threatening in the east, where a strip of cloudless sky hinted at how far they were from safety. Rain opened upon them, and Claude could hear the distressed songs of the mermaids below him.

Looking back over his shoulder for the thousandth time revealed that the sky wasn’t simply grey, but black and bruised and purple, with sheets of rain far closer than he was sure the mermaids appreciated. It was impossible to see how the water moved from this distance, as the waves that circled him were far more pressing, sending his stomach up into his heart upon occasion. The rumble of the thunder growled like a great beast, the ocean hungry for the loss he’d owed her.

Claude tossed his head back, fanning out his hair and letting the cool rain fall across his neck and into his open mouth, somehow refreshing when contrasted by the cold of the ocean at night and whatever magical water the mermaids had been feeding him. There was a temptation, to tear at the side of his plank until a stake could be retrieved, and save himself from drowning. That might’ve been easier if he wouldn’t have had an audience, but Claude didn’t know what the mermaids were expecting of him. He could tell that, at most, they had an hour or two until the winds and waves caught up with them; and that was surely generous, as gusts sent the raindrops around him spinning.

Where was that hope from two days ago?

Between the momentum the mermaids had kept up and the rocky waters around him, it took Claude a moment to realize he was slowing. The only noise came from the weight of the raindrops on the surface of the ocean, and he couldn’t see the shadows of his escort. A sob escaped him, more regret than fear, to be hopeful at any point during this unlikely journey suddenly feeling absurdly foolish.

“Claude!” Fae called from behind him, and he hardly had to turn as the mermaids pushed forward until they were all to his right side. “We can’t…”

Fae looked as if they might cry, and a heavy gust of wind threw their long green hair across their face. Claude facepalmed and shook his head.

“It’s fine!” He shouted over the wind. “Thank you for trying.”

“Be quiet!” Hilda shrieked. “We can’t ensure your safety,” she clarified.

“But we’ve one last hope to save you,” Fae finished. “It requires a leap of faith on your part.”

“Anything,” Claude pledged.

A short moment passed before Lorenz’s distress over the situation took hold of him. “Well? Leap!”

Catching their meaning, Claude adjusted himself to be one side of the plank, took a breath, and shoved off, feeling the wood scrape the tips of his feet as the board was upturned by a wave.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I wanted to do a thing with the mermaids like Abe from Hellboy (I have only seen the older two movies) where perceiving organ function and sonar and foreign contaminants in a body by touch was second nature. Hopefully it made sense. And their ability to see the direction underwater is based on how we think birds see the magnetic field.
> 
> My goals for this chapter were to advance towards their physical destination and to set up an emotional connection between the characters so that any future romance and vulnerability might feel believable.
> 
> Wishing you all well. Thank you for reading. I'd love a kudos or comment, especially if you're a guest. <3


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